the first case, he exposed the forgery i of a historical manuscript to which the Czechs were for national reasons fanatically attached. In the second instance he espoused the cause of a friendless youth unjustly charged with ritual murder, against whom popular prejudice and indignation were in! tense. As president he has distinguished himself by moderation and courage. He appears to have kept above party controversies, to have rebtained the confidence of his people, and to have made himself a permanent place in history by his moral qualities, and not, like many of his contemporaries, mainly by political adroitness or military adventure.

CONTEMPORARY Italian politics illustrate forcibly the rather obvious truth that while great issues beget new parties they also create divisions within parties. The recently formed Clerical People's party of Italy is having the latter experience-an experience being repeated with modifications wherever the social conflict runs athwart political unity based upon common religious faith. Similar issues are sowing dissensions within the Centre party of Germany.

In Italy, the People's party includes a radical wing which takes its name from its leader, Migilioli. The movement he represents springs from two issues the war itself, and the social transformation following that conflict.

Migilioli is a pacifist, occupying upon this issue a position in the Clerical party analogous to that of the Independents and Communists in European Socialist parties. To him and his followers, the war is still a living influence in politics, because the men who supported war betrayed a moral turpitude which makes them unworthy of future confidence.

This sentiment alone would not be strong enough to hold together a political party as the war itself recedes into the background of history; but the division it creates chances to run parallel with another cleavage among the Clericals, into radical reformers and conservatives. And here Migilioli presents himself as a new Savonarola. His rude eloquence moves the masses and he preaches social reforms in the guise of a religio-political reformation. He seeks thus to wed faith with social discontent. In regard to the first, he has nothing in common with the Socialists who see human progress exclusively under material aspects. He has organized the rural proletariat of Cremona and secured the partial adoption of measures for the betterment of his followers, that follow in many details the doctrines of Karl Marx.

ACCORDING to Berliner Tageblatt Hamburg is beginning to recover from the depression caused by the interruption of its foreign commerce during five years of war and blockade. Life has returned to its wharves, although the vessels that handle its imports and exports sail under foreign flags. Hamburg merchants are chartering vessels abroad, which fly the colors of their own countries together with those of Germany. Imports include hides, cotton, lubricating oil, and provisions. Exports are more varied and no longer are vessels departing in ballast, as they did when trade was first resumed. A great demand for German products exists, especially in South America, and is growing daily. Hamburg's maritime rival is Rotterdam, which has become a relatively more important port since the war than before. The trade of Czecho-Slovakia will probably pass through Hamburg, as that country has no disposition to

promote the prosperity of a town so largely under Polish influence as Danzig. Real estate is active. The stock exchange is very busy handling both securities and foreign bills.

CIVILICA CATTOLICA, a leading organ of the Italian Catholics, thus criticizes the Versailles Treaty:

What is most important and will have a decisive effect upon future history is the absence of a spiritual or ethical purpose. It is devoid of all recognition of justice, of moral sanction, and of Christian charity. It denies God and His eternal laws, and His name is not mentioned in the document. For this reason it is a baneful thing and an obstacle to reconciliation. Such are the true contents of those 440 articles of peace, which might be more properly called articles of war, agreed upon by more than 30 victorious powers and imposed upon a single vanquished enemy that is, in a word, the famous Treaty of Versailles. It is a document that posterity, when the passions and hatreds of the day have waned, will remember in quite a different spirit. Its consequences will be disastrous not only for the vanquished but also for the victors. We have said before and we repeat more emphatically now: 'We have paved the path to new wars, and the chart of that path we are to follow is called in scornful irony a peace treaty.'

THE following placard recently appeared on the walls of the Grand Mosque of Tunis:

Glory to God forever! Oh, Mussulmans, in view of the report published this morning in the newspapers of the occupation of the capital of Turkey, which is the city of the Caliphate, every Mussulman should participate in a demonstration which will be held to-day, at one o'clock in the afternoon, before the Government House, to protest against a measure that spells disaster for the Islam religion.

Although the police immediately tore down the poster, many hundreds assembled at the appointed time in front of the Government House. Many students from from the Grand Mosque School were in the throng. The people were perfectly quiet and lawabiding, but demanded that a delega

tion of six or seven of their number be received by the Resident General. The latter promptly granted their request, and a discussion of the situation followed in which it was explained that the occupation of Constantinople would in no way affect the prestige or independence of their religion.

At the recent elections at Algierswhere the franchise laws have recently been liberalized in their application to natives, two tickets were put up. One of these apparently was put in the field by a group of educated natives in sympathy with the government. The other ticket was headed by the grandson of one of the old chiefs, and probably represented the real sentiment of the people. At least that ticket won. Its supporters made political capital of the fact that the government's candidates were natives who had become naturalized citizens of the republic. The French authorities annulled these elections.

LAST month a widespread strike of agricultural laborers occurred in Northern Italy. According to the reports in the Italian press, 260,000 ceased work. The dispute was characterized by a conflict of interests and policies between the Catholic labor confederation and the Socialist confederation, in which the former was hampered by its association with the People's party, which is an alliance of conservative and capitalist elements with radical labor organizations. The working people seem inclined, therefore, to drift into the more radical party.

About the same time a serious dispute occurred between agricultural employers and farm laborers in the big estate territories of Germany east of the Elbe.

CZECHO-SLOVAKIA has recently held a general election. According to

GERMANY has not only an emilem. During the war and the succeedgration, but also an immigration probing disorders on its eastern frontier a great number of homeless refugees have crowded into Berlin from Galicia and neighboring territories. Between 80 and 90 per cent of these are Jews, who are mostly unemployed, and in many cases unemployable. Their presence in the city, suffering as it is from a shortage of provisions and from enforced idleness among its native workers, is causing vigorous protest. Crowded into the poorest tenements, they are said to threaten the public health, and their criminal record is bad.

KÖLNISCHE ZEITUNG discusses in a leading article the probability of an enduring peace between Roumania and Soviet Russia. Both countries lay claim to the old Russian province of Bessarabia, which is now in Roumanian control. The Soviet authorities, on the other hand, have something over $66,000,000 of Roumanian gold in their possession.

This represents the holdings of the Roumanian national bank which were -taken to Moscow when the German invasion swept over that country in 1916. A little later securities and valuables deposited in the other banks of Roumania were also taken to Moscow. Altogether Soviet Russia now has in its possession Roumanian gold, silver, and securities to the value of nearly a billion and a quarter dollars, a considerable fraction of the entire wealth of the former kingdom.

THE Palestine Weekly, a Zionist paper printed in Jerusalem, brings news of a project to develop the water power of the river Jordan. Since Palestine is a land without coal or fuel of any kind, industrial progress depends largely upon utilizing the power resources of the country to generate electricity. It is suggested that the Jordan, thus harnessed, would supply not only power, light, and heat, but would also work pumps to irrigate extensive valley lands now barren.

PERONNE, Bapaume, Arras, La Bassée, Laventie, Armentières, Lille, Cambrai, Valenciennes, Avesnes, St. Quentin names glorious forever in the history of the British race, the graves of hundreds of thousands of our British dead! These, and many other places no less memorable, I have visited in the course of a recent tour of upward of four hundred miles through the departments of the Somme, Pasde-Calais, Nord, and Aisne. I wished to see 'how France is getting on' in the way of 'reconstruction.'

Before describing the manner in which our ally is tackling the problem of restoring to life the land thrown out of cultivation and the buildings destroyed by the war, I shall give a picture of the general state of affairs which is to be found in the more advanced parts of the devastated areas. I say 'the more advanced,' for I understand that in other parts of the front, such as the neighborhood of Verdun, which I did not visit, the destruction of the soil, and everything else, is so

complete that it has so far been impossible to do anything in the way of reconstruction comparable with what has been done in the districts now under review.

First let it be said that a week in the Régions Libérées at this time of year is like one long funeral. The sky is overcast; there is frequent rain; the mud is indescribable. The lamentable aspect of the ruined towns and villages, the vivid impression of death which haunts some parts of the battlefields, the thought of what France has innocently suffered in the utter loss of 38 per cent of her men between the ages of 20 and 30-all these things fill the mind at first with a feeling of despair. But for the character of the French peasant, patient, indomitable, devoted to the soil, and willing to encamp in the merest fragment of his own house, and suffer every kind of hardship, if only he may 'get back to the land' and produce a harvest this year, the prospect would be gloomy indeed. I shall presently show that, because of

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The whole of this area a year ago was a wilderness of shell holes, trenches, barbed wire entanglements, and all the hideous débris of the war. To-day, over an astonishingly large part of the ground, trenches and shell holes have been filled up, projectiles and barbed wire have been collected, and often on both sides of the road as far as the eye can reach the land is under plough. Not only so, but even on the rich soil of the Nord there is abundant manuring, for competition is keen among the farmers as to the comparative yields of their respective plots.

The following figures, which give the area brought under cultivation before the end of last year, should be compared with those above in order to realize to what extent the French

Total..

But the figures are eloquent witness enough to the frightful losses which the peasants have suffered in livestock alone.

back to the land.'

railways, and canals. In this respect the work already done is very remarkable. Taking the four departments together, the following figures were reached before the end of the year:

Omitting the Department of the Nord, for which returns are not yet available.